Advances in directional drilling (i.e., horizontal drilling) along with advances in hydraulic fracturing have made economical the production of oil and gas from shale formations. For future planning purposes, companies involved in oil and gas production need estimates of future production from such shale formations. In an attempt to provide such estimates of future production, the oil and gas industry has attempted use formation modeling tools originally designed for conventional reservoirs (with high permeability). However, shale formations are vastly different than conventional reservoirs. For example, some shale formations may have 500 times less porosity than conventional reservoirs.
So far the industry has been focused on well-level planning and the so-called “factory model” is adopted for field-wide well planning, i.e. cookie-cutter wells are drilled after performing a pilot study to select the preferred well plan for the entire field. However, heterogeneities that exist in shale fields indicate that one particular well plan is likely not optimal for the entire field.
Any advance which makes modeling of future hydrocarbon production from shale formations more accurate would provide a competitive advantage.